The medical subtheme is far less represented in LEGO CITY than I thought it would be. Most sets produced since 2005 have focused on emergency vehicles, with an understandable preference for ambulances and a fixation with emergency helicopters (which are far less common in real life, but add an element of playability due to the inherent swooshability of anything capable of fly).

60330-1 Hospital makes the fourth iteration of a medical facility in the subtheme. They all maintain the same scheme throughout the years: a building plus an ambulance and helicopter. Usually a new model of the hospital was released every 6 years starting in 2006, with the last version being the incredibly awesome 60204 City Hospital, released in 2018. It remains to be seen if the release of 60330-1 Hospital just 4 years after the previous one is indicative of an increase in the weight of the subtheme or responds merely to a better compatibility of the medical line with the newly added road plates, which LEGO is trying to integrate in the CITY line.

The choice of vignettes to conform the hospital (play room, cafeteria, hospitalizations room for mother and newborn, a toilet and a CT machine), together with the inclusion of two underage patients and a clown in the set would have made it ideal to represent a maternal and children hospital. The presence of a clearly injured male stunt racer and another potential male adult patient, as well as the absence of any external indicator to it in the design, make it clear, however, this is not the case.

On the same note, we have yet to see a LEGO CITY medical set that doesn't revolve around hospitals/emergency. Primary care and mental health are absent to the date in the CITY line, which I find understandable to an extent, but also find it to be a lost opportunity to widen the scope and introduce issues that are being increasingly discussed in society, schools and therefore children.

Minifigures

The set contains 13 minifigures, 3 of them are medics, 2 drivers for the helicopter and ambulance, a female janitor, a Clown and 6 other patients/visitors, including a boy and a baby.

The appearance of Wallop and Citrus the clown in the set, both stemming from the Stuntz subtheme, adds to the sense of unity of the CITY line. I'm pleased to see a clown in a hospital set with a prominent paediatric area, since I find it reflects the real life effort of many paediatric hospitals to improve the experience of children and lessen the fear of bodily harm they may suffer when they need to be hospitalized.

A mother and baby are represented for the second consecutive time in a hospital set. This time the mother is dressed in a pyjama with the upper part tied in the back in the style of the hospital gowns that everyone hates so much, although the detail is almost completely obscured by the long ponytail. It is apparent from both minifigures and the hospital room accompanying that the cause of hospitalisation is the childbirth. That being the case, this would have been an unbeatable opportunity to introduce a pregnant torso, be it moulded or with an appropriate decal, something that to my understanding has never been represented in any minifigure. Had the set been made clearly a maternal and child hospital, this would have contributed to make it unique and stand apart from its predecessors, specially the 60204 City Hospital with which comparison is inevitable, being the direct previous model of this set.

The baby's body is of a slightly different colour than the one in the previous hospital was. Not that it's a problem, but a whole different colour would have been better in my opinion.

Vehicles

There are three vehicles in the set. The smaller one is Wallop's bicycle, which comes equipped with wide tyres, making it look like a fat bike which might be appropriate given Wallop's work as a stunt expert which might take him to sand, mud, snow or any other challenging terrain to perform his stunts.

The ambulance and the helicopter take a radical change in their colours pattern, which is consistent with real life tendency to paint emergency vehicles in brighter colours for easier identification. The change is so drastic though, that it completely breaks continuity with the more traditional white and red pattern still present in the hospital building, making the vehicles and the hospital look like different sets.

The design of the ambulance has seen a shift towards a vehicle with a boxed rear, which makes me think (correctly or not) of American ambulances. Where I live, ambulances with a boxed rear are scarce and usually are assigned to advanced vital support.

The inevitable helicopter is what it is. Best part of it is that designers decided to integrate the helipad in the building, and not just leave the plate lying around.

Hospital.

As noted before, a similar colour pattern to previous hospital models is present in the hospital building of this new set, although complemented with some blue accents.

In the exterior, a road plate and some columns provide the necessary support for a raised perpendicular section of the hospital, making the building asymmetrical, which is nice in my opinion. The road plate is divided by one grey and white 1x4 flat tiles delimiting what might be a car park for the ambulance before the columns. I would have welcomed the addition of some 2x4 flat printed tiles like the ones used in 60304 to divide the road, because that would have allowed to better integrate the plate with the rest of the new road system.

The ground floor has a rather simple lay out, with a playroom for kids in one side, some seats in the entrance hall and a bar selling sandwiches and drinks in the other side. No reception desk or emergency department is present, which I missed.

The second floor is occupied by the hospitalisation room for the mother and newborn, which must be a premature since the ordinary crib from the previous hospital has been upgraded with a tech panel, resembling a thermic crib. The rest of the furniture is extremely simple. The perpendicular section of the second floor is an off level, justified only by the need to rise the floor to allow the ambulance to cross below. Nothing wrong with it, was it not because the building solution to fill the gap between levels is leaving an immense unused volume. I kind of expect this gap fillers to be used to hide mechanisms for some function, which isn't the case.

Directly above this filler volume is a little bathroom with tiled floor, a sink and a golden water tap piece. Not much to see here. The rest of the perpendicular section is occupied by what appears to be a CT scanner. No protective wall or operating room exists for the medic, which could also have been replaced by some kind of x-ray technic.

The roofs of the building are occupied by the helipad and a mini garden with some relaxing seats. There are white borders delimiting this spaces, but no protective railing has been placed in these rooftops that people can access to.

Playability

My 4yo son has been helping me build every new set we've acquired for the last year. Being a child he is obviously way more interested in playing with the sets than in displaying them like I am. Both the ambulance and the helicopter fulfil their function, and see a fair amount of action regularly. This has made us notice that the cabin ceiling in the ambulance tends to fall of pretty easily. I've also noticed that despite being in awe of the hospital itself, he seldom really uses it as something more than a background setting. I suspect this is related both to the choice of vignettes that conform the hospital, as to its own structure, because every room has a rather narrow access, making it difficult for even his tiny hands to move the minifigures inside the rooms with ease.

Conclusion

It seems the addition of the road system has forced the designer to diminish the number of pieces with which to create a new hospital set following the traditional scheme of building, ambulance and helicopter, maintaining the same price as its predecessor. This new version of the hospital brings some innovations over its predecessors, mainly in the pattern ot its vehicles and the architectural design of the building.

The new hospital set the ground to be something really special, which could have been with probably minor tweaks. However, it seems LEGO didn't realise the potential in this set and only tried to give us a facelift of the old standard hospital. The problem is that with such an accomplished predecessor as the 60204 City Hospital, lacking something genuinely original th new 60330-1 Hospital pales in any comparison.

Perhaps instead of trying to repeat the same formula again and again with the medical buildings, an approach similar to the 20th anniversary Harry Potter sets, with connectable mini modular rooms at more affordable prices would be better. Of all the LEGO CITY subthemes the medical one offers the widest range of possible different vignettes one might put together in one building.

Being as it is, I honestly can't recommend buying this set unless you do it with a substantial discount, or are really interested in the medical subtheme like I am.